An aesthetic of comprehension: the distribution of American land art and conceptual art in Germany, 1968-1975

This dissertation looks at the display and distribution of land art and conceptual art in Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Its subjects are not so much the works of art per se as they are the tools and strategies used to bring the often ephemeral, remotely located or immaterial works of art to viewers beyond the original site of display. In the late 1960s, conceptual art and land art changed the terms of the art object, pressing it beyond something physical and discrete to include the process or idea underlying it as well as the relationships it generated among artist, viewer and work of art. Whether a massive excavation of soil in the Mojave Desert by Michael Heizer, or a set of instructions for producing one of Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings, land art and conceptual art traded in projects that renegotiated the relationship between the work of art and efforts to make it visible, exhibitable and distributable to audiences. Reproductive tools such as photographs, Xeroxes and publications were employed to new ends, understood for their ability to make the work of art present for viewers under a variety of circumstances. ❧ The examples discussed here break down into four categories of distribution through which these documentary materials reached their viewers. These are books, artists’ magazines, television and exhibitions. The techniques and strategies of presentation taken up in each of these four categories are investigated, and the ways in which they worked to bridge the distance between a work of art and its viewer are addressed. As a result, the document is reconceived, understood not as a belated facsimile of something located beyond its borders, but as an aesthetic object capable of bringing the viewer into contact with the work of art’s most central inquiries.